Gabriel woke with a jolt, breath caught sharp in his throat.

His vision swam. Something heavy pinned him to the damp ground, warm and unmoving.

Panic spiked in his chest.

He tried to push up, but the weight didn’t shift. His hand met fabric, thick, tactical. A shoulder. An arm. Then warmth. Then the realization hit.

Leonardo.

He stilled.

The Esper’s arm was wrapped around his waist, holding him close. One of Leonardo’s legs had hooked over his own. His head rested near Gabriel’s neck, breath faint against his collarbone. The scent of smoke and heat lingered on his skin.

Gabriel froze, every muscle tight.

It didn’t matter that Leonardo was unconscious. His body still radiated strength. Pressure. The sheer presence of him lit up every alarm in Gabriel’s mind. Not just fear, but something else, too.

Jaw tight, he forced himself to stay still.

This wasn’t the time. Leonardo was injured.

He forced himself to breathe.

With slow, deliberate effort, he shifted to the side, slipping out from under Leonardo’s grip. He eased the arm down, trying not to shake, and propped the Esper onto his back.

Leonardo didn’t stir.

Blood darkened the side of his temple. His left shoulder looked worse, fabric torn, skin mottled with deep bruising, likely from the blast impact. His face was pale, jaw slack. But his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

Leaning over him, heart pounding, he checked the wound.

“Idiot.” he muttered, throat tight.

His hands moved on instinct. Emergency med foam. Pressure wraps. Field stabilizers. He cleaned the wounds with quick, efficient motions, biting down the tremor in his fingers. Focus mattered. It helped. It made his fear smaller. Slower.

But as he checked Leonardo’s vitals, something felt off. The air around him buzzed faintly, charged.

He pressed two fingers to the side of Leonardo’s neck, then to his wrist. Power pulsed beneath the skin, erratic and sharp. Unstable.

Gabriel hesitated, then gently pried one of Leonardo’s eyelids open.

His breath caught.

His normally hazel iris, brown and green with flecks of gold, had turned fully golden, liquid and bright like metal heated past its limit.

Rampage warning signs.

He reached for Leonardo’s hand, heart thudding harder now. Skin warm. Power spiking.

Gabriel steadied his breath, closed his eyes, and began to guide.

Energy met energy, wild, volatile. He gathered it carefully, coaxing it into a steadier rhythm. Not suppressing it, but aligning it. Grounding Leonardo’s scattered resonance, keeping it from breaking free. From turning destructive.

Slowly, the violent undertow ebbed. The heat receded. Leonardo’s hand relaxed in his.

Only then did Gabriel release a trembling breath and pull back.

He checked for a pulse again. Still there. Steady.

Gabriel looked around.

The air shimmered with dense mist, coiling in uneven spirals. The ground beneath them felt strange, too soft, like packed earth warmed from within. The sky pulsed a dull violet. No clouds. No wind. No sun.

Gabriel knelt beside his pack and retrieved the emergency kit. The thermal sheet unfurled with a crinkle of silver. He stretched it between two nearby stones for cover, then wrapped another layer around Leonardo, adjusting it carefully until it held. Once done, he sat down beside him, arms folded tightly across his chest, eyes fixed on the clearing’s edge.

The warmth clinging to Leonardo’s coat was already starting to fade.

Gabriel didn’t feel safe.

But he wasn’t alone. And that small truth gave him just enough strength to try again.

Gabriel’s hands hovered over the comm panel for a long moment before he activated it. No response. Not even static.

He toggled the signal again, cycling through every available frequency. The interface blinked red with every attempt.

The scanner’s compass spun slowly, like it had lost all sense of magnetic north.

He stared at the screen. Waited but then nothing.

With a tired breath, he shut the panel and set it aside. The silence that followed felt heavier than the fog, settling in layers across his skin. Somewhere in the distance, the zone pulsed, not wind, just pressure.

Reaching for his tablet, he hesitated, then began logging observations.

He paused, eyes fixed on the screen. His hands had started trembling again. He tried to stop it by gripping the tablet tighter, but it only made the tremors worse.

He glanced at Leonardo, still unconscious. The med patches were helping, but not enough. Not fast enough.

He resumed typing, forcing his focus back onto the data.

But the silence kept crawling in around the edges. The kind of silence that came after impact, not peaceful, not empty. Just the kind that knew something was missing. He stopped again.

He shifted his weight back, closing the tablet with a soft click. His knees were drawn close, arms wrapped around them, breath shallow. His thoughts skittered between emergency protocol and the memories of what had just happened. Of fire. Of white light. Of Leonardo’s voice pulling him back before the breach opened beneath them.

“I’m not okay,” he said aloud.

The words were barely louder than the fog. But hearing them made something in his chest twist. Like admitting it wasn’t allowed. Like the world expected more from him than that.

“I’m not okay,” he repeated, quieter now. “But I can’t fall apart.”

He looked at Leonardo again. Watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. Focused on it. Anchored himself to it.

One breath at a time.

He had to keep going.

Because the moment he stopped, the fear would catch up.

And Gabriel knew from experience, fear was fastest when you gave it space to run.

But just as it started to gain on him... a low groan pulled Gabriel out of his spiral.

He looked up fast, heart catching.

Leonardo stirred, his brow twitching before his lips parted in a whisper. Gabriel leaned in, holding his breath.

“Gabriel...” Leonardo murmured. His voice was cracked, hoarse, barely more than a scrape of sound. His eyes were still closed, but he said the name like it was the only thing anchoring him.

Gabriel exhaled, sharp and unsteady. The relief hit so hard it almost hurt.

“I’m here,” he said softly, voice catching. He shifted closer and brushed trembling fingers near Leonardo’s collarbone, careful not to jar the injured shoulder. “Take it slow. You hit your head, and you’ve got a bruise on your shoulder.”

Leonardo’s eyes opened. The golden glow was gone, his irises were back to their usual hazel, though bloodshot and unfocused. They locked onto Gabriel immediately, pupils dilating as if confirming he was real.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, slurred but unmistakably clear in intent.

He blinked.

“I... what? You’re the one who...”

Leonardo’s gaze swept over him. “You’re okay?” he repeated, quieter now. “Just tell me.”

Gabriel stared at him, stunned.

“I’m fine,” he said at last.

He swallowed hard. His fingers curled. The next words came before he could stop them. “You could’ve died.”

Leonardo didn’t react the way Gabriel expected.

“You were going to,” Leonardo simply said.

The words landed like a stone in Gabriel’s chest. He flinched.

“That doesn’t mean...” His voice cracked. “You don’t just throw yourself in front of something like that. That blast wasn’t a normal strike. You could’ve been vaporized.”

Leonardo winced slightly as he tried to sit up more. “Didn’t think about it.”

Gabriel’s temper flared, sharp, raw, fueled by too many things at once. “Exactly. You didn’t think. You just acted. You pushed me down like you don’t… like you don’t even care if you live or die.”

Leonardo’s head turned toward him. “That’s not what it meant.”

“You nearly died,” Gabriel went on, not letting the silence settle. “I saw your barrier break. Do you know what would’ve happened if Kael hadn’t reached us in time?”

Leonardo’s face stayed still for a moment. Then: “I’d still do it.”

Gabriel’s mouth fell open. “You’re insane.”

Leonardo let out a breath, not quite a laugh. “Maybe. But I wasn’t going to let it hit you.”

“You’re the Commander,” Gabriel snapped. “You’re supposed to make calculated decisions.”

“I did,” Leonardo said.

Gabriel stared at him.

The air between them felt too charged. He couldn’t sort through what he was feeling, rage, fear, guilt, something else underneath it all. It blurred together, thick in his throat.

Leonardo’s shoulders sagged slightly. He looked away, toward the broken trees and distorted sky.

“Are we still in the zone?” he asked quietly.

Taking a breath, Gabriel forced his hands to steady. “I don’t know. The geography doesn’t match any map. There’s no signal and I can’t even ping the train.”

Leonardo’s eyes drifted closed for a moment. “So it’s just us.”

Gabriel nodded. “For now.”

Leonardo turned back toward him, and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.

“Then we’ll figure it out. Together.”

Gabriel didn’t answer. But he didn’t look away either. And when Leonardo’s fingers brushed against his wrist, warm and light, he didn’t pull back.

Not this time.

The wind had changed.

Not just direction. Texture. It moved in pulses, like it wasn’t air at all but something denser.

With effort, he pushed to his feet, limbs heavy and slow to respond. The strange ground flexed under his boots, spongy and uneven like waterlogged earth that had never seen sunlight. He turned enough to check on Leonardo, who was still upright but unsteady.

“We need shelter,” Gabriel said, trying to steady both his voice and his body. “Somewhere defensible. Somewhere we can breathe.”

Leonardo blinked hard, still shaking off the blast. “Lead the way.”

He scanned the horizon. The mist had settled low, thick as smoke. Off to the left, past a fractured slope and what looked like calcified debris, a structure loomed, partially buried, overgrown with thick, pale vines that gave off a faint glow.

“There,” Gabriel said. “Dome structure. Maybe an old research pod or outpost fragment.”

Leonardo followed without comment. The short distance felt longer than it should have. Gabriel’s boots sank slightly into the terrain with each step. It didn’t feel like dirt or stone, but something in between. And the farther they went, the stranger everything became.

The sky above was a dull, lifeless purple. No clouds, no sun. Just muted color and a sense of being watched.

When they reached the base of the dome, Gabriel hesitated.

The vines blanketing the structure were undulating gently. The closer he got, the more pronounced it became. Not hostile, but reactive. He lifted a hand and the vine nearest to him rippled, its glow pulsing in time with his movement. With his heartbeat.

“They’re responding to something. Not motion, something else.” Gabriel muttered, too tired to hide the strain in his voice.

He reached for his scanner, then dropped it back into his pouch. No use. The data would be corrupted anyway. He would log it manually later.

Inside the dome, the temperature spiked as soon as they crossed the threshold, abrupt but not unbearable. Heat radiated from the walls in faint waves.

He rubbed his temple. “This place is wrong.”

Leonardo tilted his head. “More wrong than monster fog and energy spirals?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said flatly. “Because this place is too quiet.”

Vines glowed faintly along the inner walls, shifting with their movement, brightening slightly when Leonardo stepped closer, dimming when Gabriel sat down. The air had weight, like a storm waiting just beyond reach.

Crouching nearby, Leonardo studied the way the vines pulsed. “They’re reacting to us. Energy? Temperature?”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Emotion. Or maybe our psychic states. I think… I think it’s syncing with us somehow.”

Leonardo’s brows rose. “So we’re inside a psychic mood dome now?”

Gabriel snorted, tired and caught off guard. “Something like that.”

He reached for his tablet again, this time forcing his hands to stop trembling long enough to record notes by hand. His handwriting was slanted and uneven, but the structure of observation gave him something solid.

The vines, the heat, the way the air moved, he documented it all. He needed the distraction.

If he stopped, the weight of everything that had just happened might drag him under.

Eventually, they managed to settle in and light a small fire, the flicker of flames offering a rhythm to match the dome’s slow, pulsing light.

Gabriel sat cross-legged near the base of the wall, shoulders hunched. His jacket was still damp from the mist outside, and his body ached to the bone. The dome pulsed with quiet glow, responsive vines breathing light in rhythm with their moods. Softer now. Subdued.

Leonardo leaned against the opposite wall, one leg stretched, the other bent. A strip of med-patch clung to his temple. His movements had slowed, but the fire in him hadn’t fully dimmed. It never did.

They ate in silence. Compressed rations, bland and efficient. Gabriel’s appetite was gone, but his body needed something. He forced down a few bites, then offered the water bottle to Leonardo.

Leonardo took it and drank. After a pause, he held it back out, brows furrowing at the tremble in Gabriel’s fingers.

“You need to rest.”

Gabriel didn’t respond right away. He took the bottle, capped it, and set it aside with more care than necessary.

Leonardo watched him quietly. Then, without a word, he shrugged off his coat and stood, slightly unsteady, then stepped closer.

He looked up, startled. “What are you doing?”

“Your hands won’t stop shaking,” Leonardo said softly.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re freezing.”

Before Gabriel could protest, Leonardo crouched in front of him, draped the coat over his shoulders, and pulled the edges closed. The warmth and weight were immediate. Gabriel blinked, throat tight. He didn’t want to accept it. Didn’t want to need it.

But he didn’t push it away either.

Leonardo sat beside him, close but not crowding. His presence was steady. Unmoving. One arm rested lightly against Gabriel’s, offering support without demand.

The glow of the vines softened as the heat in the dome settled.

Gabriel leaned back, breath hitching as he adjusted the coat and pulled it tighter. His shoulders dropped, not in surrender, just in release.

They stayed like that for a long time. Not speaking. Not looking at each other. Just breathing. Listening to the fire and the low hum of the zone around them.

He closed his eyes, but didn’t sleep. He could hear Leonardo breathing beside him. Slower now. Steady. The weight of his presence had begun to shift, not away from danger, but toward something calmer. Something Gabriel hadn’t allowed himself to trust in a long time.

He didn’t trust the zone.

But maybe he was starting to trust him.

Shifting slightly, he let their arms press more firmly together.

He didn’t say anything.

But he didn’t move away either.

The fire crackled, softer now. Gabriel tilted his head, listening to the wind.

Then, quietly, barely above a whisper: “Stay awake just a little longer,” he murmured. “Just in case.”